Representations of Cult in Epinician Poetry, in Reading the Victory Ode (2012)

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chapter 8

Representations of cult in epinician poetryFranco Ferrari

epinician and cultic song

In Pindar’s epinicians the victory celebration, which can involve the athleticvictor, his friends and indeed the whole community, seems sometimes tobe linked to or embedded in a larger cultic occasion.1 But the converse isalso true: athletics is sometimes a theme for sacred song. Pindar’s secondPartheneion, a song of praise for Apollo performed in the ancient andprecisely defined liturgical context of the Theban Daphnephoria festival,incidentally celebrates some past athletic exploits of the family of whichPagondas, the commissioning party, was head (Pind. fr. 94b 41ff.). Thesetwo cases demonstrate the permeability of the border between epinicianand cultic song.

The Alexandrian editors of Pindar’s odes gathered into four books aharvest of songs, many of which cannot be categorised neatly as epinicians.For example, they included the eleventh Nemean, a song that Didymus(� Nem. 11 (iii: 184f. Dr.)), the last of the great Hellenistic critics ofPindar, supposed in fact to be a partheneion, and which was composed fora non-athletic occasion: to celebrate Aristagoras of Tenedos’ elevation tothe prytany on his tiny island. We cannot, therefore, ever state withoutfurther inquiry whether a given song is or is not a ‘true’ epinician. Butthe epinician genre is surely not a later invention, for its history can betraced through verse-inscriptions on the statue-bases, tripods and so onwhich commemorate successes in athletic or equestrian contests from thefirst half of the seventh century bc.2 Nor did epinician end with Pindar:the history of inscribed epinician poetry is continuous from the seventhcentury bc down to the Roman empire. An interesting literary revival ofthis elementary form of epinician poetry can be found in the eighteenepigrams on horses (Hippika) contained in the Milan roll of Posidippus.

1 See Angeli Bernardini 1983: 70–7, Krummen 1990: passim (synopsis on p. 275), Currie 2005: 16–18.2 Cf. Angeli Bernardini 2000.

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Representations of cult in epinician poetry 159

There the epigrams follow the following prevailing pattern: ‘this horse ran(or won) at such-and-such a place (Delphi, the Isthmus etc.)’, with frequentmention of former victories won by the horse and his owner.3 Posidippus’Hippika show a certain formal similarity to archaic epigrams for victorioushorses in the keles, or horse race.4

Thanks to recent reinterpretation of certain papyri, the existence ofchoral epinician can be pushed back at least as far as the mid sixth century,making the genre more or less contemporary with the festivals of thereorganised Panhellenic periodos.5 The corpus of surviving ‘real’ epiniciansong, as opposed to epigram, contains some short poems like Bacchylides’second ode: songs improvised by the great lyric poets of the fifth century bcfor celebrations at the site of the games immediately after the contest. Most,however, are elaborate compositions which must have demanded intensepremeditation and planning. There is a very great distance between nearlyall of the longer epinicians of Pindar and Bacchylides and the kind ofalmost oral poetic production exemplified in the shorter poems.

From the point of view of pragmatics, the occasion and context ofperformance surely created a set of predetermined expectations which wereshared by the entire audience of an epinician ode. But it is one thing torealise that this was the case, and quite another to base one’s reading of agiven ode on this assumption. In most cases, determining and assessing theoriginal context of an ode is neither easy nor self-evident, for it dependson understanding the purpose or function of a given poetic message.

theoxenia in acragas: olympian 3

One piece of ancient evidence for the performance of epinician poetryat religious festivals is a scholion to Pindar’s first Nemean (7b (iii: 11–12Dr.)), an ode written to celebrate a chariot victory of Hieron’s henchman,Chromius. As the scholiast tells us,6

Hieron and his followers (�� ) sang the epinicians composed forthe great crown games during the festival for Zeus Aitnaios. Didymus is thereforepersuasive whan he says that the song for Chromius’ victory at Nemea was alsocomposed in order that Chromius himself should hear it at the festival.

3 Cf. 71.3,72.3–4., 76.3ff., 83, 86.2–3 A-B.4 Nicholson 2005: 95ff. compare nos. 5 Ebert (398 CEG and nos. 6 and 7 Ebert (all of which apparently

date to the late sixth century).5 See Rawles (this volume).6 Reading �� with mss. BD, against �� as read by Triclinius and printed by

Drachmann, and Drachmann’s �� for mss ��/��.


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We do not know in this instance if the information in the scholion derivesfrom some older source, or is a conjecture of Didymus: nor, unfortunately,is the text at all certain. Nemean 1.19–24 nonetheless paints a rather differentpicture of the same occasion:

�� !�"��# �$��#%��# &�!�'�"��( )�!* +�!�,+��#,�� +�� -�+,��.�� )�),�+��, ��+* � � %!!��/�� ) %��"�� ,+��".

I stand at the door of a hospitable man singing a beautiful song, where a fittingfeast is prepared for me: this house is not unfamiliar with frequent foreign guests!

This scene hardly fits with the idea of a solemn public festival. Nothingprevents us, as Wilamowitz guessed, from ‘understanding the poet literally’.

Other instances are more rewarding. Let us begin with Olympian 3,written to celebrate a chariot victory by Theron tyrant of Acragas in 476 bc(Olympian 2 was composed for the same occasion). The poem’s mythnarrates a legend about the origin of the olive garland with which thereferees of the games (the Hellenodikai) crowned the victor’s head at everyfestival. Heracles, Pindar tells us, brought the trees from Ister’s springs as agift of the Hyperboreans, whom he met during his pursuit of the CeryneianHind.

In the mediaeval manuscript tradition, the ode is entitled0�� 1)��2��"�� 3�+�� # ��'�� (‘For Theron of Acragas with the chariot,on the occasion of a theoxenia’).7 The same inscriptio (� Ol. 3, 1d, iii: 106–7Dr.) mentions a question which troubled the Alexandrians, introducing itwith the well-known scholiastic formula 4��.�� (‘it is asked’). Why, asksthe scholiast, despite Heracles’ importance in the myth, is it the Dioscuriand Helen rather than he who are invoked at the beginning of the poem?He goes on to say that Aristarchus solved the problem by pointing to thecult of the Dioscuri at Acragas. He adds, however, that Didymus con-sidered it historically more accurate (��)5��, i: 107, 4–7 Dr.) toemphasise Theron’s Argive ancestry and the influence of the very ancientcult of Castor and Polydeuces in that city. Some other ancient authorities(see � 1c, i: 106, 20–22 Dr.) seem to have supposed that the celebration ofthe theoxenia (to which the Dioscuri were invited) had simply happened

7 � Ol. 3, inscr. (i: 104 Dr.). For older bibliography on the theoxenia, see Filow and Welkow 1930: 302nn.1–2.



to coincide with Theron’s victory at the games. This second scholion (1c,lines 14–20) also highlights the idea, mentioned by Pindar in the ode, thatHeracles entrusted the Olympic games to the Dioscuri.

In 1961, Hermann Frankel, soon followed by Snell in his Teubner edi-tion, suggested that the words ��# ��'�� be deleted from the title asan autoschediastic interpolation. More recently, however, Eveline Krum-men (1990) has observed that the poet invokes the Dioscuri (v. 1) withthe cult title &�!,'�� (‘stranger-loving’); she adds that the statement inline 40, according to which the Emmenids, the members of Theron’s clan,‘approach the Dioskouroi with hospitable tables’ ('��"��# . . . ��"6��4��#), points probably to a sympotic context where the Tyndaridswere worshipped in a way attested on an Attic red-figure hydria of thesecond half of the fifth century bc.8 On the upper picture-field of the vase,all is ready for the entry of the Twins: we see on the bed some cushionsand two stringed instruments, and before it a table with food and someincense-burners; on the left, a bearded man is playing a lyre, while on theright a woman wearing an elaborate headdress is dancing. The twin godsare dismounting before the doors of the building (Figures 12 and 13)

Nor should we forget that at the beginning of the ode the speaker praysto the Tyndarids and Helen (ll. 1–2):

7(��"��# � &�!�'�"��# -��.�)�!!��!�)8+� � � �9!��

)!��*� 1)�8�� "�� :6�+��

I beg to please the hospitable Tyndaridai and Helen of the beautiful locks, as Ihonour glorious Akragas.

The presence of Helen together with her brothers would make no senseif the Dioscuri are being invoked as patrons of the Olympic games; but itis consistent with a theoxenion. At the end of Euripides’ Helen (1668–9),the Dioscuri tell their sister that she will share with them in libations andfriendly human gifts (xenia). In his commentary to the Euripidean passage,Richard Kannicht rightly cites the Spartan reliefs on steles which recordthe names of those who attended the theoxenia, which show the Dioscuriflanked by a female figure, very probably Helen or her xoanon.9

But Olympian 3 is also a song for Theron’s victory. The link between thetheoxenia and the epinician is clearly stated. Theron has won his equestrian

8 Red-figure hydria (Kadmos Painter c. 430–420) from a grave-mound at Duvanlii, southern Bulgaria:Mus. Plovdiv no. 298 (ARV2 1187, 36; Para 460; van Hoorn 1951 no. 241; LIMC iii (1984), s.v.Dioskuren, no.114). Publication: Filow and Welkow 1930: 302–4.

9 Kannicht 1969: 433. See Tod and Wace 1906: 137 and no. 201–3 and Chapouthier 1935: 127–51.


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(a)

(b)

Figure 12 Attic red-figure hydria (c. 430–420 bc) from Duvanlii in Bulgaria: theoxeniascene with Dioscuri.



(c)

Figure 12 (cont.)

victory precisely because, as we read in lines 39f, he was granted it as a giftby the sons of Tyndareus ();��# � "�� ,�� 7(��).

for zeus aetnauos: pythian 2

Pythian 2, for Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse, is another example of an epinicianwith links to a non-epinician celebration. According to a scholion (P.2, 6b,ii: 33 Dr.) the singer’s address to Syracuse in the opening lines of the song –:++�� ,�� !�� %� 0�<�� &��| +�!�# ��6�+�� (‘to you Icome from splendid Thebes bearing this song’, v. 3) – means that the wordsare not spoken by Pindar on his arrival at Syracuse: ‘for indeed he did notcome to visit Hieron, but rather sent the ode’ (=��> %��!�)�).10 Thescholiast continues: ‘Therefore these words are spoken either by the person

10 On the %��!�)� +�!�#, see also � Isth. 2, inscr. a (iii: 212 Dr.) and Heliod., � Lond., p. 450Hilgard.


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Figure 13 Drawing of Attic red-figure hydria (c. 430–420 bc) from Duvanlii in Bulgaria:theoxenia scene viewed from above with inscriptions.

who carried the ode to the tyrant, or by the chorus: for indeed, Pindar senthis epinicians by means of a chorus.’

It seems impossible to identify the lyric ‘I’ with the poet, because thesong is an ��> %��!�)�, a ‘sent song’. But identification of the speakerwith a chorus which was presumably local and Syracusan is no moreconvincing,11 because it is at odds with the fact that the bearer of the song(,�� . . . +�!�#) comes from Thebes (%� 0�<��).12 So only one real

11 See e.g. Cingano in Gentili et al. 1995: 366 (but Cingano concedes that the speaker could be identifiedwith the poet).

12 To get round this contradiction, August Boeckh invented a victory at the Iolaea festival in Thebes.But, as noted by Cingano in Gentili et al. 1995: 47, Thebes is mentioned as the city of origin of poetand song in other odes (Ol. 10.85; Pyth. 4.299; Isth. 6.74; 8.16–17; compare the mention of Ceos inBacch. 3.98).



possibility remains, namely that no one could have said more aptly that hewas the bearer of a lyric message from the poet’s city than a man who, likeAeneias in Olympian 6, or Nicasippos in Isthmian 2,13 was able to performmonodically the text he was carrying to Hieron.14

As for the occasion which prompted Pindar to compose Pythian 2, debatewas already very lively already among the Alexandrians. According to a noteassigned by Jean Irigoin to Didymus,15 the song commemorates a chariotvictory (l. 5ff.). It does not, however, mention where the victory happened.Timaeus classified it as a ‘sacrificial song’ (�(��)�), Ammonius andCallistratus as an Olympian, Apollonius the Eidographus as a Pythian, andDionysius of Phaselis as a Panathenaic.16 Callimachus, finally, is said tohave placed it among the Nemeans. This is usually taken as a mark of hiscaution: he would have put it in the group of uncharacteristic odes at theend of the book, either because (like Nem. 11) it was hard to classify, orbecause (like Nem. 9 and 10) it did not concern a victory in one of thegreat Panhellenic games.17

These attempts by ancient scholars to fit Pythian 2 into the frameworkof the Pythian or Olympic games have found many supporters in moderntimes, because Hieron did in fact win the chariot race at Delphi in 470,and at Olympia in 468 bc.18 But Timaeus’ statement about the ‘sacrificial’nature of the song has won no credit at all.19

In my view, however, this piece of information is worth more attentionthan it has received, for it fits well with the fact that Hieron was a priest ofthe cult of Demeter and Kore.20 Timaeus, who is our main witness aboutHieron’s hierophanteia (FGrHist 566 F96), could have been acquainted onoral or written grounds with a story according to which Pythian 2 wasfirst performed on the occasion of a solemn sacrifice in honour of Zeus

13 Ol. 6.90–2, Isth. 2.47–8: �;�, ?�)8�� , %�,��+��, @��| '�.�� +� A��.�� !��#. On theIsth. 2 passage, see Catenacci 1999.

14 See Gentili in Gentili et al. 1995: lv and Prauscello 2006: 44–5.15 Schol. inscr. Pyth. 2 (ii: 31–2 Dr.). See Irigoin 1952: 73–4.16 On Dionysius, see D’Alessio 1997: 54–5 (with the older bibliography). Lowe 2007 is a useful overview

of the eidographic problem in Pindar.17 See Irigoin 1952: 33 and Cingano in Gentili et al. 1995: 43–4.18 See Cingano in Gentili et al. 1995: 44–7.19 It was deemed absurd by Burton 1962: 112; recently, however, it has been treated more sympathetically

(see e.g. Lowe 2007: 172: ‘the term “thusiastic” is presumably a pre-Callimachean usage that failedto catch on as the occasion of the victory rose in significance as a classificatory criterion in the highAlexandrian period’. Cf. contra D’Alessio 1997: 52).

20 Cf. Ol. 6.94–5 &��),��4��| %+&�� B8+�� !�()"��( � �(��# C��8� and Hdt. 7.153.2about the Deinomenidai as ��&8�� /� 6��"�� /�. See also Pugliese Carratelli 1990: 124–5and 153–4.


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Aitnaios, whose cult had been established in Aetna by Hieron himself.21

Indeed, Timaeus had no reason to fabricate such a piece of informationsince, unlike the Alexandrian scholars, he had no concern at all with theeditorial classification of Pindar’s songs.22

The so-called Kastoreion, a hyporchema apparently set to the ‘Castor-tune’ (presumably a traditional nomos), which Pindar, as we know fromPyth. 2.69–71, sent to Hieron together with the latter poem, is probably tobe identified with his hyporcheme for Hieron, fragments of which survivein Aristophanes’ Birds and in the Pindar scholia (Pind. fr. 105 a–b).23 Ithints at a possible performance at the town of Aitna, Hieron’s new colonial‘foundation’ (founded in 476 bc). Right at the outset, the song emphasisesHieron’s role as priest, calling him ‘founder of Aitna’ (fr. 105a, 2–3):

4�� /� ��5�(+��8��, )"�� DE��# . . .

You, father, who bear in your name the rites of gods, founder of Aitna . . .

Furthermore, in the parody of the Kastoreion devised by Aristophanes inBirds 924ff., the lyric poetaster who boasts of being able to compose maidensongs and dithyrambs raises with Pisthetaerus the prospect of an ode tocelebrate newly founded Cloud-cuckoo-land.24

This festival for Aetna was probably a banquet arranged among thenobles, of a kind usual in Cyrene among citizens of Dorian origin on theoccasion of the Carneia, the festival of Apollo Carneius. Hieron, who had

21 Cf. � Ol. 6.162a (ii: 192 Dr.) and Nem. 1.7b (iii: 11–12 Dr.) and see Cingano in Gentili et al. 1995:339. Currie 2005: 258 has revived the earlier dating (476/5) for Pyth. 2 proposed by Gildersleeve andothers (it mentions neither the foundation of Aetna in 476, nor the naval battle off Cumae in 474).On the other hand, as Cingano in Gentili et al. 1995: 45 has noted: ‘the text of the ode seems tofurnish justification for a late date’, since in v. 9ff. the poet recalls that Artemis and Hermes helpHieron ‘every time he yokes his horses to the chariot’ (a sign that the two deities have favouredHieron in several earlier races). This was noted already by Wilamowitz 1922: 285–7. In any case,a late date seems assured by vv. 63–7, where the warlike achievements of the young Hieron arecontrasted with his present maturity (see also Bowra 1937: 8).

22 Obviously, Timaeus’ classification does not exclude that this song could simultaneously be anepinician celebrating an equestrian victory.

23 It has sometimes been doubted (see e.g. Burton 1962: 122–3) that when Pindar in vv. 69–71 ofPyth. 2 alludes to the gift of a ‘Kastoreion in aeolic metre’, he is referring (as the � ad loc. 125abcand 127 (ii: 51–3) would have it) to the hyporcheme celebrating the foundation of Aetna of whichfrr. 105 and 106 formed part; Boeckh (and many others since) have argued that Pyth. 2 itself isthe Kastoreion. Both the evidence of syntax (with the contrast between the two songs mediated by+F� . . . ��: ,�� +F� +�!�# . . . G��,�� . . . ) and the two songs’ shared dochmiac incipitwould seem to confirm the testimony of the scholiasts (see Bowra 1937: 37 and Gentili in Gentiliet al. 1995: xlvii–viii; also Cingano in Gentili et al. 1995: 391–2).

24 According to Diod. 11.49.2–4, Hieron not only obtained heroic honours as )"��# of Aetna at themoment of his death, but had founded the city precisely with this aim in mind.



founded Aetna ‘according to Hyllis’ rule’ and by ‘Aigimios’ sacred laws’(Pyth. 1.62 and 64), following the traditions of the two Doric lineagesof the Heracleidai and the Pamphyloi, may have reinstated the Doriantradition of communal aristocratic meals at Aitna.

Indeed, such a banquet and a homage to the founding hero of Messanaare mentioned by Callimachus in the second Book of the Aetia (fr. 43 Pf.),where we read (accepting Massimilla’s supplement [�,+]�.� at the end of v.80) that because of an oracle of Apollo (ll. 79–81),25

��.� � ��)��>� � ) H��+�� ). [�!�].,I. �. � �� +. �.�. )�!��(�� +� �.�. +. [�]��. "J

K]!.��#. =+�� @��# ��+� [�,+]�.��]6�� +�* �.�. ..� )!.

this country does not invoke its founder by name, but the public officials invitehim to take part in the victims offered to the dead with these words: ‘Let the manwho built our house come, propitious, to this meal . . . ’

In the same part of the Aetia, Callimachus surely alluded to Hieron himselfin his capacity as founder of Aetna (cf. l. 38]�. #. � ��, and scholion 41�)<!�[� —| DE��. [—).

Since lines 36 and following

0�,)!]��#, ��6�� ?8'[��"]�. �. ��+��"��[. . . ] Theokles, come to Naxos . . . . to the public [banquet . . . ]

are concerned with Theocles, founder of Naxos, who is asked to come tohis town to take part in the public banquet arranged in his honour,26 itis plain that Hieron’s name occurred in a context concerning the honoursgiven to a city founder by means of a solemn banquet.27

On the other hand, Pythian 2 begins by announcing (vv. 3ff.) Hieron’sequestrian victory: hence no one can deny its epinician intention. It is anepinician: but one devised to be performed at Aetna during a festival inhonour of Zeus.28

25 For ��+� cf. Hdt. 2.119 and 7.191, A.R. 1.587.26 See the apparatus and the commentary of Massimilla 1996.27 See Massimilla 1996: 116 (‘37 . . . fort. vocabulum ��.� (��"��) supplendum est’) and 327–8.28 In Pindar, one should note several other cases of contiguity between sacrifice and mousike: see e.g.

Ol. 9.112f. DL��, �,� � �� ", � !�8��, ��)/� ��&8�� <�+,�; Nem. 11.5–7 ��!!* +F�!��<�.�� %��4,+�� 5�� /�,| ��!!* �F )�"��J !$�� &� <��+�� )�� %��8, pae.12.5–7 (fr. 52m (a), G2 Rutherford) ��+* � � �.�[6��| ?�]',�� !��..�.,&�� (�"[�(�)| +�]!��M��"�� +"�� and fr. 59.8–12 (S8 Rutherford)��]# -+��# N�[� |��&,�+�]��)��-|��]� ��!(5�(+��J|�� +F�. [|]�. ��. ,��.�. " � | )�� (�"��#..


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pythian 3: a frustrated epinician

Pythian 3 is a poem of consolation29 sent around 474 bc by Pindar toHieron, who was already suffering horribly from bladder stones.30 Heretoo, we find some typical encomiastic themes. Hieron is mild with hiscitizens, friendly and not envious towards the nobles, and an admirablefather towards his guests ('�.��, ll. 70–1). But the praise seems to comesecond to Pindar’s polite refusal, phrased as a hypertrophied recusatio,31 tocome to Syracuse, because he is unable to bring his host the gift of goldenhealth.

This ode is (so to speak) a frustrated epinician. Although it makesreference (ll. 72–6) to some earlier equestrian victories of the tyrant, it doesnot mention a recent epinician occasion.32 Still, even though he is unableto cure Hieron, the poet tells the tyrant that, although he will remain inThebes, he will pray for him to the Mother of the Gods (ll. 77–9):

%!! � ��$'�� +F� ��O� ��!�P��", *� )�;�� +� ��,�(�� Q�

R�� +�!�� +8��+�*� �� $6��.

But I am minded to pray to the Mother, the venerable goddess unto whom (alongwith Pan) before my porch the maidens often dance and sing at night.

The mystery-cult of the Mother, the great goddess variously identified withCybele, Demeter and Rhea, was deemed to have some therapeutic powers;it had Pan, invoked as ‘companion of the Great Mother’ in Pindar’s Hymnto Pan (fr. 95.3),33 and the mountain Nymphs as its usual participants.Surely the maidens ()�;��) of l. 78 are to be identified with these minorgoddesses and not with Pindar’s daughters, as suggested by a scholion (adPyth. 3, 139b ii: 81 Dr.).

But the plainly autoschediastic character of such a statement does notmean that we must be suspicious of Aristodemus of Thebes34 when he

29 See Wilamowitz 1922: 280. 30 Cf. � Pyth. 1.89a (ii: 18 Dr.). 31 See Slater (1988).32 Young 1983: 36 rightly remarks that �� can refer by itself to a recent or even present exploit since

this adverb is sometimes employed ‘from the point of view of the future audience or reader, notthat of the author of the poem’, but are are not entitled to understand the �� of P.2.73f ()/+�� %��!�� R(�"�� E�!�� &8��#| �Q# %��$�� S��)�# T!�� G"�� ) in this way.Hieron won with his famous keles Pherenicus at Delphi in 482 and 478 bc, while Pyth. 3 presupposeswith D��.�� '�� (l. 69) that Aitna’s foundation had already occurred; see Gentili in Gentiliet al. 1995: 76 and 417.

33 Cf. also Ar. Av. 745f.: R�� ,+�(# ��Q# %��&�"�� | ��+�8 � +�� 6��$+� � H��"�.34 See Gentili in Gentili et al. 1995: 418–19. About the tradition related to Pindar’s attitude to Meter

and Pan cf. Eustath. Proem. Pind. 27 (iii: 297–9 Dr.).



tells us (through � Pyth. 3, 137b ii: 80, 16–81, 3 Dr.) that Pindar, after hehad a vision of the Mother of the Gods in a dream, had a statue-groupwhich portrayed the goddess and Pan erected in front of his house, andthat the Thebans afterwards moved it to stand next to a temple. Whetherwe consider it trustworthy or not,35 this scrap of information is still aninteresting relic of a local Theban tradition, and �+� ��,�(�� (‘myporch’) in l. 78 of Pythian 3 can indeed refer only to Pindar’s house. Thesame kind of spatial direction-signal is found at Isthmian 8.2 (7�!��8�6�(��* ��,�(��), which refers to the front door of the victor’s father. Theuse of ��"�� (‘neighbour’) in Pythian 8.58 ��"�� . . . )�� )�8�� &$!�'�+/� (‘neighbour and keeper of my wealth’) for the proximity of the oracleof the hero Alcmaeon to the house of the wrestler Aristomenes of Aigina,36

and likewise Bacchylides’ mention of ��,+��# %��.# (Bacch. 6.10ff.)for songs to be performed in front of the house of Lachon of Ceos, areequally suggestive, and support a strictly deictic interpretation of the wordsin Pythian 3 as well.

According to William Slater in his paper ‘Pindar’s house’,37 the speakerof these lines was the chorus, and hence the Mother of the Gods musthave been worshipped near Hieron’s house in Syracuse. Giovan BattistaD’Alessio in his paper ‘First-person problems in Pindar’38 has rightlyobjected that a Syracusan chorus could not (in l. 69) have called Hieron ‘aguest–friend from Aitna’ (D��.�# '��#).

In its extant form, our text of the scholion concerning Pindar’s daughtersmay possibly represent the reduced form of a more detailed version, whichcould have enabled us to reinterpret the text in a more realistic way. Becausethe Nymphs who follow Pan in worshipping the Great Mother are nothingmore than a cultic projection of a maiden chorus, the poet’s daughterscould have participated in such performances together with other Thebangirls.

According to both the Vita Ambrosiana (i: 1, 3 Dr.), and a scrap ofa Pindaric vita from Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. 1438), Daiphantus, Pindar’sson, was the ‘bay-bearer’ (daphnephoros) in a procession to the Ismenionshrine for which Pindar wrote a maiden-song. This poem, which has beenidentified with fr. 94c, apparently included a reference by name to thepoet’s two daughters, Protomache and Eumetis.39

35 FGrHist 383 F13.36 See the sceptical attitude of Lefkowitz 1981: 57–66 and Schachter 1986: ii 140–1.37 Slater (1971). 38 D’Alessio (1994): 139.39 Cf. P.Oxy. 2438, col. ii. 28–30 �(��# � � �.[L6� R�]�. [�]+.86�� )[�� 9:+��]�. I� +��+��[$��

)�� ]U��U� V# = %�[6�J W P��]��# +� )�!�. 6[��;�� D]�,.!!��; see Gallo 1968: 68–70.


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Furthermore, the cult of the Mountain Mother allowed Pindar to estab-lish a more immediate relationship with Hieron, because of the strongpresence of elements of her mysteries both in Thebes and in eastern Sicilyin the fifth century bc. The latter, for example, is attested by rock sculp-tures with images of the Great Mother which a farmer discovered by chancesome years ago near Palazzolo Acreide, not far from Syracuse.40

In a song focused like this one on the clash between the near and the far,the feasible and the illusory,41 the poet’s pragmatic appeal to the Motherof the Gods thus makes up for his inability to carry a wonderful recoveryto the ailing Hieron. The arrival motif is consequently transposed in theform of a frustrated wish: ‘)�" )�� (�� +,!��’ (‘I would have comeby ship’) in l. 68, and ‘�'�),+�� )�’ (‘I would have come’) in l. 76.

The consolatory message sent by the poet thus sets up a relationship thatis saddened both by its recognition of the limits of the human conditionand by the weakness of the art discovered by Asclepius, but which can stillexpress hope for Hieron’s full recovery, thanks to a prayer envisaged as yetto happen in a place far from him.

a deceptive context: the karneia in pythian 5

But we must be not too hasty in conjecturing cultic backgrounds forepinician songs. I will end with a very brief discussion of a victory odewhose performance has been wrongly and quite generally portrayed as partof a traditional religious festival.

According to some scholars, Pythian 5, though like its companion-piecePythian 4 written to celebrate the chariot victory won in 462 bc by theking of Cyrene Arkesilaos IV, was performed during the Apollo festival ofthe Carneia;42 or, rather, in the compressed formulation of Wilamowitz,was itself ‘ein Gedicht der Karneen’, a poem to be sung in procession alongBattus’ Way, the straight paved road followed by processions in honour ofApollo Carneius which moved eastward from the acropolis to Battus theFounder’s tomb in the main square of the Libyan city, just as we read inll. 90–3 of the ode:

Battus made a paved road cut straight over the plain, to be smitten with horses’hooves in processions that beseech Apollo’s guardianship for men; and there at theend of the market-place Battus lies apart in death.

40 See Lavecchia 1994: 39. 41 For a good treatment of these motifs, see Medda 1981.42 See e.g. Wilamowitz 1922: 379; Krummen 1990; 98–151; Gentili in Gentili et al. 1995: 160.



But it would be idle, I think, to follow on the map of ancient Cyrenethe movement of the festive komos along Battus’ Way, or to read the sitesmentioned in the text as points visible to the poem’s first audience.

Lines 96–8 of Pythian 5 have likewise been interpreted as saying that theprocession passed the tombs of the Cyrenean royal family, the Battiads.Unlike Battus’ tomb, which was set at the eastern boundary of the market-place (l. 93) and which has been located by archaeologists, the graves of theBattiads mentioned in ll. 96–8 were located outside the built-up area ofthe Libyan town: ‘but outside the built-up area (�� +8��) others lieapart, heroes who reached Hades’.43 Their burial sites have been identifiedin recent times with the chamber-tombs dug into the rock of the slopebelow the acropolis. A scholiast (129 ii: 189 Dr.) explains quite correctlythat ‘Battus seems to differ from the other heroes in that he was buried inthe market-place, and the others before the town (�� # �,!��#).’

Furthermore, line 24 clearly states that Pythian 5 was sung in the gardenof Aphrodite (%+&� )�� D&��"�#): a choice of venue which recallsthe graceful wood (N!��# . . . �+��,��) sacred to Artemis the Gentle nearthe river Casas in Metapontium, mentioned in Bacch. 11.118. But, as wehave learnt from the Italian excavations on the site of ancient Cyrene ledby Stucchi and Bacchielli, the shrine known as ‘Aphrodite’s garden’ lay tothe north of the town not far from the spring of Cyra, but quite a distancefrom Battus’ Way.44 So it seems that only the chorus’ voice was able torecall to the audience’s mind the setting of the Carneia procession, in anideal, rather than a factual journey focused on the foundation and historyof the Libyan town. It connected the grave of Battus in the market-placewith the tombs of the Battiads outside the city; and the procession of youngmen who met their king in Aphrodite’s garden with the celebration of thenymph Cyrene’s city within the ritual frame of a great public sacrifice toApollo Carneius (see ll. 79–81X��!!��, ��, |G��Y �, �� <"4�+��| G(�8��# %��)�+�� ,!��: ‘we honour the well-built town of Cyreneduring the banquet sacred to you, Carneian Apollo’).

Pindar liked to connect the hic et nunc of the occasion with the cyclicaltime of cultic ritual, and the immediacy of sight and hearing with thememory of significant themes of civic and religious identity. This supple

43 See Giannini in Gentili et al. 1995: 536. On the interpretation of this very difficult passage, see mostrecently Currie (2005), 241–4 and ch. 11, passim.

44 Of the two proposed identifications of ‘Aphrodite’s garden’, both are linked to the sacred north-west area of the town; see Giannini in Gentili et al. 1995: 517. See also the map in Stucchi 1975and reproduced in Krummen 1990: 279, and that subsequently proposed by Bacchielli 1984 andreproduced in Gentili et al. 1995 as ‘cartina 2’.


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attitude towards space and time was an important element of his artisticpoikilia.

Many other things could be said on this subject, but these few exampleswill, I hope, be enough to show that we do not have at our disposal anygeneral rule or unequivocal clue by which to recognise the presence of culticcontexts in Pindar’s corpus of epinician odes. Only by decoding, as studentsof ancient drama do, the directions sparsely scattered by the poet, and bycomparing these with the information supplied to us by ancient scholarsand historians, can we attempt to grasp some sparks of the living contextswhich Pindar and his rivals exploited to test the powers of a many-sidedpoetic form.

Representations of Cult in Epinician Poetry, in Reading the Victory Ode (2012)

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